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ORATION, 



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Ifr E V I E W 



AN ORATION 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



YOUNG MEN OF BOSTON, 





ON 


THE 




FOURTH 


OF 


JULY, 






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DCCC XXXI." 




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11 E V I E W. 



An Oration, delivered before the young men of 
Boston, followed by a dinner of no inconsiderable no- 
toriety, and published in Carter, Hendee & Babcock's 
best style, will, no doubt, find a large number of read- 
ers. When it is remembered, indeed, that Boston 
claims to be, not only, " the cradle of liberty," but 
also, the " literary emporium," one can hardly help 
feeling a certain degree of curiosity, as well concern- 
ing the manner and the style, as about the matter 
and the substance of a performance, which, doubtless, 
was specially intended to suit the taste, and tickle 
the fancy, of those to whom it was addressed. 

A judicious orator pitches his pipes in such exact 
harmony with the souls of his hearers, that, as a 
musician can at once supply the bass of a tune, 
though the air only be played, so an experienced 
reader, from the tone of a speech, can, in general, 
make out, pretty well, the prevailing taste and fa- 
vorite principles of the audience. In common cases, 
and where we are satisfied that nature has gifted the 
orator with the ordinary quantity of sense and tact, 
this method of judging an audience, may be safely 



4 

enough relied upon. But all recollect the fable of 
the ass, who undertook to imitate the little dog, and 
to fawn upon his master ; and, in like manner, that 
sort of asses, who deliver orations, will, now and 
then, in the hope of delighting, run into very ridicu- 
lous excesses. 

I fear that, in the instance of the oration before 
the young men of Boston, there must have been some 
such mistake ; for God forbid, that the taste or un- 
derstandings of the young men themselves, should 
be measured by any such standard. Any one, who 
shall judge the young men of Boston, by the printed 
speech, put forth by their orator, will do them griev- 
ous injustice. It ig in their behalf, it is to vindicate 
them, that I have taken pen in hand. The oration 
itself is too silly and absurd, to merit any thing more 
than silent contempt ; to the folly of speaking such 
a speech, were no one but himself concerned, the 
orator might have added, with impunity, the folly of 
printing it; — who would take the trouble to gainsay 
him ? But, in the present case, the young men of 
Boston are implicated. Unless some public protest 
be made against it, the community will, naturally 
enough, regard them as the god-fathers of this off- 
spring of imbecility ; their reputation for common 
sense is at a stake ; their character demands the sa- 
crifice ; and the ink of criticism must flow. 

It is, indeed, with the greatest reluctance, that I 
undertake the task of criticising a performance, 
which bears, upon its face, such marks of utter folly ; 
which is, in fact, so destitute of arrangement, con- 
nexion, argument, or meaning, — is such a soft and 
shapeless mass, that one hardly knows how or where, 



to lake hold of it. The orator complains of the 
English political writers, — that, " they stop at a 
fixed line, and all beyond is chaos and absurdity." 
I wish I could pay him even so limited a compli- 
ment. I wish he stopped at a fixed line ; and 
that I was not obliged to drop the word " beyond ;" 
and, with respect to his performance, to say, that " all 
is chaos and absurdity." If it had any salient points 
of common sense, it would make my task a good deal 
easier ; as k is, I must do the best I can. 

If, in the course of my remarks, I should seem to 
the orator, to indulge in any undue severity, I be- 
seech him to remember, that in the realm of criti- 
cism, all old-fashioned and antiquated notions of rank 
and distinction have long since been done away. 
" We, the critics," have long since attained to that 
perfection of liberty, which he so idolizes ; we ac- 
knowledge no " privileged classes ;" we bow to no 
superior ; in his own elegant and forceable language, 
" we are our own governors ; we are the Lord's 
anointed ; we are the powers that be, and ive hear 
not the sword in vainy A demagogue may, or may 
not, be successful ; a speech may, or may not, be 
clapped ; but printed nonsense will inevitably be ex- 
posed to merited ridicule. 

I will begin with a few remarks on the general 
tone of the oration. Its whole spirit is so bitter, 
sour and crabbed, it overflows with such malignant 
contempt of every body and every thing ; — the ora- 
tor delights so much in abusing all the past and all 
the present ; dwells with such evident pleasure on 
" national absurdities, political nuisances, and public 
abominations ; " and speaks with such gusto of " the 



fatal virus of political corruption," that, whatever 
other blunders he may have made, he certainly shows 
a good deal of skill, in concluding his oration with 
the Avords, " unutterable ruin ;" — which tAvo w ords 
may indeed be looked upon, as a recapitulation of the 
whole speech, as a sort of index, echo, and chorus, 
to the w hole six and thirty pages. 

According to this learned Theban, " our own sys- 
tem, unparalleled as it is, is as yet an imperfect 
system ;" — liberty even here, in America, " lies idle," 
and her cause " is by no means sure ;" — our indepen- 
dence " languishes with a sickly and scarcely per- 
ceptable existence ;" — even here, the people " are 
deceived," and " circumvented ;" — even here, they 
are " capricious," punishing their innocent friends, 
and forgetting the long tried affection of their faith- 
ful servants* ; " — we even " have our full share of 
national absurdities, political nuisances, and public 
abominations" ; — we even, " are yet in comparative 
infancy," and the spirit of liberty is so cold, and 
" public sentiment is so timid," — men in general are 
so much ashamed of liberty start naked, — " that 
we hardly need expect to be stripped of our swad- 
dling clothes, until we have strength to tear them 
from our limbs," (or as, perhaps, might properly 
enough have been added, — till some political wet 
nurse, in the shape of a fourth-of-July orator, 
stuffs our mouths with pap, and in the mean time, 
does the good office for us.) 

So much for ourselves ; but as for the rest of the 
world, — fools, — slaves, — idiots, — the language has 



* Qu. The excellent Mayor of Boston .' 



not names bad enough, or terms strong enough to 

stigmatize the depth of their folly and wretchedness. 

But let the orator speak for himself. 

" If we yet hesitate, let us look at Europe, and behold how 
she has drifted down the tide of eighteen centuries ; ever 
changing, alternately receding or advancing, as she falls into 
the varying currents ; now threatened with instant destruction, 
and escaping perhaps by sheer awkwardness ; now on the very 
eve of refuge and prosperity, but plunging into the only strait 
encompassed with real danger ; now pausing in the jaws of 
ruin, to meditate upon some idle fancy ; now abandoning the 
path of her salvation, to gratify a vain revenge. It is revolting, 
it is sichening to behold her. Her lofty frame, her noble mind, 
her admirable accomplishments, serve but to deepen her degra- 
dation, and we mourn more bitterly the hopelessness of her 
reform. 

* * * She has missed all her glorious opportunities ; she 
has suffered unnumbered changes, utter and entire revolu- 
tions ; has been overrun by almost all the nations of the earth ; 
has wiped from her surface the vestiges of successive empires, 
and yet now presents an aspect, hideous with the leprosies of her 
Tiberian age, (?) and reeks under the very symptoms, (qu. what 
symptoms }) which provoked the mockery of the Goths.^^ 

pp. 14, 15. 

It was the judicious advice of an old preacher to 
a young preacher, " never to raise the devil for the 
sake of laying him again." This excellent precept 
seems never to have reached the ears of the young 
men's orator ; for he goes ranging like a madman, 
through all ages and nations, conjuring up the direst 
phantoms, in the shape of Romans, Goths, popes, 
priests, feudal chieftains, astrologers, alchymists, 
Venetian merchants, moors, mahometans, huns, nor- 
mans, cathedrals, fiefs, castles, benefices, kings, no- 
bles, Lord Byron, the author of Paul Clifford,* 
principalities, dukedoms, counties, rotten boroughs, 



* Did, the young men's orator ever read Paul Clifford ? Regent street 
is not mentioned in it, and so far from being a defence of the nobility, it 
is a satire upon them, and a very bitter one too. 



8 

and Heaven knows what besides, and is at great 
pains and expense to transport them all the way 
across the Atlantic, for no other earthly reason, 
so far as appears, except to show his skill at exorcis- 
ing and abuse. The European nobility, for instance, 
are belabored through three pages in terms like the 
following, — 

" Nothing has ever blackened the human heart, and seared 
the concience more irretrievably than the manners of Euro- 
pean high-life. Their errors, (qu. whose errors ?) tollies and 
violences have signalized other ages ; this, they, (qu. who?) 
have blighted with the mildew of cold, contemptuous selfish- 
ness. Their wealth and privileges must be supported, if the 
laws are warped. Their luxury must be pampered if the 
country mourns ; they succeed if by subtlety ; they triumph 
if by treachery ; adroit in policy, cunning in ambition, they 
maintain their own preeminence, and sooner than relinquish 
the extortions of their birth-right, (?), they would sprinkle their 
palace floors with the blood of the provinces, and wash them 
with the tears of their own poor." 

In truth, if w^e are to give credit to the screechowl 
notes of this evil omened orator, the whole world is 
in a most pitiable condition. Here in America, to 
be sure, there are a chosen few, who have got the 
true idea of liberty, which if duly carried into action, 
with a total disregard and contempt of every princi- 
ple of political wisdom, hitherto acknowledged to be 
well founded, will at length place us, " on the 
height to which we aspire," and " raise our whole 
population to an undrempt elevation of dignity and 
happiness." But, as to the rest of the world, there is 
no hope for it. All the nations of Europe, are now, 
and ever have been, and ever will be, in a political 
state, wretched beyond all description. The maddest 
fanatic never so limited the number of the elect, as 
our orator does, the number of the free ; the most 



furious polemic never assumed a tone more lordly 
and dogmatical, than that, in which the young men's 
orator indulges, from the beginning, to the end, of his 
oration. 

After this long tirade against all people, nations, 
tongues, and kindred, the ingenious gentleman very 
coolly assures us, that it is to the predominance of 
Englisfi notions, that we may trace " much of the 
asperity which vitiates our political differences, and 
which is alike the enemy to candor and truth." I 
do not think we shall need the foreign importa- 
tion much longer ; for I am very certain, we have 
in this young men's oration, a specimen of " as- 
perity" of undoubted domestic manufacture, which 
may safely be warranted, equal to any imported. 

Such is a fair account of the orator's tone and 
manner, and a comprehensive summary of his doc- 
trines and principles ; — so far, that is, as he seems to 
have any. For in truth the reader is not a little 
puzzled in diverse places of the oration, to guess 
what the orator would be at. The greater part of 
his speech is made up of high sounding words, strung 
together, pretty much, at hap hazzard. One would 
imagine that he had turned over the leaves of a 
young ladies common-place book, culled out a great 
parcel of choice phrases, such as " stately halls," 
" armorials and trophies," " sportive dances," " pon- 
derous foundations," " stupendous columns," " anti- 
quated scaffoldings," " golden coronets," " grotesque 
and fitful drapery," " sparkling towers," "embroider- 
ed banners," " groves and gardens," et cetera, et 
cetera, and had sprinkled them up and down his dis- 
course, without troubling himself much about the why 
2 



10 

or the wherefore. He seems also to have a particu- 
lar fondness for mixed metaphors. Take for instance 
the following sentence : 

" We should be slow to attribute the imperfections, which de- 
form our system, to the system itself. There is no ftiult in the 
design ; no defect in the construction ; the site is well chosen ; 
the materials at hand, and all that is requisite to insure to our 
country a continual career of prosperily , an unfading vigor, an 
ever renovating youlli, is a determination to eradicate the ob- 
structions in the road, to tear down the antiquated scaffoldings, 
to abandon the miserable tools and cumberous machinery, with 
which it has been surrounded, and with the strong arm of the 
people to go to work." p. 7. 

What activity of imagination, what vigour of fancy ! 
This one short paragraph is worth a whole book of 
Ovid's Metamorphoses. " Our system," is first, an 
unfinished building, then a race horse, then a youth 
of unfading vigour, next, a go-cart, with its road ob- 
structed, and then an unfinished building again. 

I am inclined to to think, that tyranical old aristo- 
crat Lindley Murray, would shake his head at the 
sentence which follows : 

" When we reflect, that the essential, the peculiar principle 
of this happy country, the principle that all power resides in 
the people, emanates from the people, and is responsible to the 
people ; that this principle when at the very acme of its tri- 
umph, at the full tide of its glory, after its long, its prosperous, 
its unparalleled career, should be confronted, doubted and de- 
nied even here, where we have occular proof and continual 
demonstration of its benefit and efficacy, it needs no augury 
to pronounce an hour even of this day, inauspicious for mere 
exultation," P- 6. 

The desire to make what is vulgarly called, a 
dash, has introduced a strange confusion of ideas into 
the following paragraph. It really contains some 
very surprising information : 



/ 



11 

" If we seek examples for our country and for ourselves, let 
us resort to the new created West. There the fountains are 
uncorrupted. There civilisation meets nature unimpaired. 
There we can behold how the young armed ( ?) American 
grapples with the wilderness, and thence we can return, and 
imagine how our fathers lived. Europe presents much to our 
view, but America still more. There, (that is to say, in Amer- 
ica) liberty, like the buried giant struggles beneath the trem- 
bling mountains; there, from aroused nations, swells a new mur- 
mur like the " sad genius of the coming storm." There Scythia 
frowns again upon the devoted South, and the shade of Kosci- 
usko walks with the noon-day pestilence amid their (qu. whose) 
affrighted hosts." pp. 33. 

Here follows a choice specimen of the true sub- 
lime. The whole " Art of sinking," contains no- 
thing equal to it. 

" Do we suppose that we can shed our liberty upon other 
countries without exertion ; and let it fall upon them like the 
dew which stirs not the leaf ? No. Liberty must be long held 
suspended over them in the almosphere by our unseen and 
unwearied power. The more intense the heat which oppresses 
them, the more must it (qu. which, liberty or the heat ?) satu- 
rate and surcharge the air ; till at last, when the ground is 
parched dry, when vegetation is crisped up, and the gasping 
jjeople are ready to plunge into destruction for relief — (i. e. are 
ready to jump out of the frying pan into the fire,) then will it, 
(qu. what ?) call forth its hosts, from every quarter of the hori- 
zon ; then will the sky be overcast, the landscape darkened, 
and Liberty, at one peal, with one flash, will pour down her 
million streams ; then will she lift up the voice which echoed 
in days of yore, from the peaks of Otter to the Grand Monad- 
nock ; then will 

• Jura answer through her misty cloud, 



Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud.' 

There now ! — if that is not fine, — it can't be for 
vv^ant of thunder and lightning. 

Our orator, like others of his stamp, delights most- 
ly in generalities, and so long as he avoids descend- 
ing to particulars, he froths and fumes away, with all 
the spirit of a bottle of ginger beer ; — I do not like 
to shock his republicanism, by a more aristocratic 



12 

comparison, or 1 might possibly have said a bottle of 
champaign. But unluckily for himself, in a certain 
part of his discourse, whether by way of illustration 
or ornament hardly appears, but for some reason or 
other, or what perhaps is just as likely, for no reason 
at all, he deems it necessary to enter into a brief 
sketch of the history of the world for the last 
eighteen centuries. These historical reminiscences 
are pretty much in the style of a book Avell known 
in all young ladies' schools, called "Wlielpley's 
Compend," but from beginning to end, they abound 
in errors, the most absurd, such as any young lady 
of thirteen, ought to be heartily ashamed of. This 
historical sketch has the following preface : 

" To what eminence would she (Europe) not have attained, 
had her youth looked forward to futurity, unblinded by a super- 
stitious veneration for established institutions : had they (qu. 
who ?) disregarded the watchwords " church and king," re- 
jected the collars of nobility, spurned their (qu. whose ?) gold- 
en coronets, and jewelled stars, and aimed boldly at the good 
of the people, and the amelioration of the world ?" 

After a little more preliminary flourish, the orator 
goes on to trace the history of Europe, from the 
christian era ; — for at that period he seems to think 
the history of Europe begins, never having heard, I 
suppose of the Roman republic, or the Grecian com- 
monwealths. But seriously, I should like to be in- 
formed, if it can be possible that this young men's 
orator, has yet to learn, that the change from 
republican freedom to imperial servitude took place 
at Rome, not out of a "superstitious veneration 
for established institutions," but by the arts of Ju- 
lius Caesar, who began by being a demagogue, and 
so overturning the old institutions, and ended by 



13 

being a tyrant, and building up an empire on the 
ruins of the republic? Can this young men's orator 
possibly be so ignorant as not to know, that the Ro- 
mans for a long time alter the establishment of the 
empire, held to the perfect equality of all Roman 
citizens, "rejected the collars of nobility," "spurn- 
ed golden coronets and jewelled stars," and held the 
name of king in abhorrence, bitter as that even, of 
the young men's orator ? And does he not know, 
that the idea of a privileged order of nobles, the in- 
equalities of rank and " trappings of nobility," were 
introduced into the empire, not out of any " venera- 
tion for antiquity," but by the innovating, reforming, 
radical, measures of Diocletian and Constantine, in 
utter contempt and total disregard, of all ancient laws 
and prejudices? Is this young men's orator, so 
ridiculously ignorant as not to know, that the " watch- 
words," as he calls them, of " church and king," 
were first heard within the last two hundred years, 
and were never heard at all, at least as a party sig- 
nal, out of the limits of Great Britain and Ireland ? 
Does he not know, that this English tory signal, 
would be as unintelligible to an old Roman, could 
we call one from the grave, to a chieftain of the mid- 
dle ages, or to a Russian or Polish nobleman of our 
own times, — as unintelligible even, as this young 
men's oration itself? 

But let us have a specimen of the historical sketch. 
Thus it begins : 

"For three centuries after the birth of our saviour, Rome, 
the mistress of Europe, exhibited at once, the most ignomini- 
ous depravity, the most brilliant literary excellence, (qu. how 
many writers of the third century, does the ingenious orator 
know, even by name ?) — and the highest political grandeur. 



14 

J^ation after nation ivas successively reduced to her sway, and 
captive kings followed the triumphant chariots of her generals, 
through crowds of adoring people, and poured oid the riches of 
their distant dominions into her insatiable treasury.''^ p. 15. 

Now Niebuhr is nothing to this. The discoveries 
he has made or pretends to have made, in Roman 
history, are like dust in the balance compared with 
this splendid discovery of the young men's orator. 
It always had been supposed hitherto, that all the 
brilliant Roman conquests were achieved before the 
commencement of the christian era. There is a fel- 
low, one Ed\A ard Gibbon, no doubt totally beneath 
the notice of the young men's orator, who undertakes 
to say upon the authority of a parcel of old, anticpiated 
Latin and Greek historians, that beside- the province 
of Britain, and Trajan's transient conquests in Dacia, 
the emperors added nothing to the extent of the em- 
pire. But no doubt this is all a mistake ; and I sup- 
pose the young men's orator has some learned work 
in the press, in which he intends to confute all pre- 
vious writers on this interesting subject, and to intro- 
duce a radical reform into history. 

If I am right in conjecturing that he has already 
begun to print, he had better add to his treatise a 
short appendix on modern chronology, for the sen- 
tence below, contains some splendid discoveries in 
that branch of learning. 

"At length after a barren interval, the age of Bacon, Des- 
cartes and Galileo commenced ; and human reason after hav- 
ing been immersed in syUogisms four hundred years, began to 
walk abroad, (qu. whereabouts were the orator's wits walking 
while he was writing this sentence?) Charles the Fifth now 
concentrated in himself the martial glory of Europe. Henry 
the Eighth, in the qualms of his tender conscience, established 
a church in England after his own heart, and with himself at 
its head, in lieu of the pope ; Elizabeth soon followed," &c. 

pp.20 21. 



15 

Shades of Usher, Newton and Petavius,. hide your 
diminished heads in silence ! Here is a chronologist^ 
who outdoes you all ! The world had hitherto sup- 
posed, that Henry the Eighth, was quietly laid in 
his grave, before either Bacon, Galileo, or Descar- 
tes, had seen the light, and that, of the three. Bacon 
only had yet appeared upon the stage, and he, but as 
an infant three years old, when Charles the Fifth 
expired in the retirement of the cloister. But here 
comes an orator, and, with one stroke of his pen, re- 
forms all that, — and let no worshipper of antiquity 
dare to raise his voice in opposition to the decree ; 
for in the orator's own words — 

" The young American is not to be deterred from. 

wholesome innovation by the cry of Radicalism and Reform. 
No lurking treason insinuates itself into his heart. Guilt 
seizes not upon his imagination. He may promote any suc- 
cession, unravel any usage, attack any principle of the consti- 
tution, [and, I suppose, tumble all history and chronology into 
a heap] and, provided he can ameliorate, he finds a generous 
people ready to follow." 

But I am tired of pointing out errors and exposing 
absurdities. There is no pleasure in breaking a 
lance against a post of wood, or in thrusting blows 
at a man of straw. I will therefore leave the orator's 
" political abominations," learned in the school of 
Fanny Wright, or studied at the feet of I know not 
what hoary demagogue, to be " frowned down" by 
the good sense of the community. The young men 
of Boston have too much mother wit, to be cajoled 
by stuff so very wretched. If Fanny Wright herself 
had put forth an oration, what she would have said, 
would doubtless have exhibited a combination of 
artful sophistry and sprightly wit, such as would. 



16 

have demanded a well-considered answer. But this 
unfledged disciple of hers, this new-hatched duckling 
of radical reform, must paddle long in the mud and 
water before he will attain size enough to attract 
the aim of the marksman. On the present occasion, 
I have considered him not at all as a politician, but 
only as a public speaker. Since, however, I have 
touched upon politics I cannot refrain from a parting 
word of advice : Let the young men's orator re- 
form his grammar, reform his rhetorick, reform his 
knowledge of history, reform his style, reform his 
taste, reform his imagination, reform his understand- 
ing, and it will then be full time for him to undertake 
to reform the state. 



UBRARvopcoNGRE™ 



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